Postal 2

Ever have one of those days? I mean, on Monday, I had to slip the pastor five bucks just to atone my sins, and then a bunch of Osama Bin Laden look-a-likes torched the church. Then on Tuesday, the SWAT team stormed the Gary Coleman book signing I was at, subsequently killing him. And Wednesday, well, let's just say it involved leather chaps and a room full of rednecks. Oh? You've never had a week like that before? Well, you certainly will after playing Postal 2.

'It's only as violent as you are,'? reads one of the taglines on the box. Decapitate a head with a shovel, kick it around, set it on fire and even urinate on it if you feel inclined to do so. Postal 2 will undoubtedly turn some heads in Congress (and maybe even fill up a few vomit bags).

From the start, the gameplay is flawed. Enemies are impeccable shots and can take quite a few hits even on the lower difficulty settings. This, of course, dumbs the strategy way down because all the cunning tactics learned in First-Person Shooter 101 are thrown out the window. Instead, you'll have to rely on having plenty of ammo and health packs to successfully complete objectives most of the time. Objectives can grow trite quickly also, as it always boils down to a shoot-out-to-get-out-alive after an objective has been complete. And while I'll commend the developers for creating an interactive world, I can't ignore the excessive load times. Paradise City is divided into several sections, all with excruciatingly long load times. Needless to say, the flow is severely hindered due to the load times, and the free roaming environment showcased in games like Grand Theft Auto III is totally lost. Postal 2 is also fairly short and doesn't have a multiplayer mode, and despite what many will think, running around and setting everything on fire with napalm will get old after a while.

Postal 2 is raunchy for the sake of being raunchy. Behind every corner, there's an obscene joke that harps on anything imaginable. Ethnic, political, religious, and sexual jokes are cracked constantly and none of them are highbrow in the least'but you know what? It's funny in a sick and demented sort of way. After all, sticking a cat's rectum on the end of your gun as a silencer is sure to get a few laughs.

In the visuals department, Postal 2 is strictly average. Framerates are solid and character models look nice with decent animations, but textures are drab and ugly. Likewise, many of the objects aren't varied or rendered well. A lot of the minor effects such as flames and explosion don't hold up too well either. Overall, everything looks very crude, and whether or not it was intentional is debatable.

Anyone interested in buying Postal 2, read this: Don't buy it for the flawed gameplay or average graphics, because it's not worth the price of admission. It's best looked at as an extreme guilty pleasure. There's plenty of obscene humor and over the top violence to be had, but not much else.